Lucy had to laugh at that thought. “It sounds like he’ll fit in quite well in Bliss. Not a lot of polite society here.”
Jax held up his phone. “Exactly. I’m getting in good with the king.”
Meaning Stef. “So you texted Stef and told him what?”
“That you and Michael understood the whole threesome thing, but Ty needs a refresher course,” Jax replied.
“He’s going to get called before the men.” River put a hand to her mouth, stopping a laugh.
He really was, and it wouldn’t be fun for Ty. Michael would likely tell them all to fuck off and go back to his mountain, but Ty would show up. It served him right to have to deal with Max Harper telling him what a fuck-up he was and Stef lecturing him about thruples when he wasn’t even in one.
Michael. She’d felt so good when she was in his arms. And then she’d seen Ty and felt guilty.
She caught sight of another reason to feel guilty. She’d left them both out there, but Michael didn’t even have a coat. “Jax, could you take Michael his coat?”
“Sure.” He grabbed it and nodded his wife’s way and then looked down at Buster. “You coming with me, buddy?”
Buster jumped on the couch and settled in.
Jax sighed. “That dog’s soft. Be right back.”
The minute the door closed, River walked over to the TV and turned it on, quickly finding a sports channel. “Come with me. He’s been traveling for days. Between the pizza and the game, he won’t even notice we’re gone.”
“You’re trying to ditch your husband?” Lucy grabbed the wine and a couple of glasses. She would need the alcohol because she suspected River had questions.
“We’ve been together twenty-four seven for eighteen months worried that he was going to be killed or taken into custody. Except for the brief but terrifying period of time when he was actually taken into custody, but that’s another story. Yes. I’m happily ditching him, and come tomorrow he’s looking for a job and we’re going to be normal and take breaks from each other.” River walked down the hallway to the main bedroom. It was closed, the guest room open and light on. “You didn’t sleep in the big bedroom?”
Lucy shrugged. “I kept it ready for you. I changed the sheets last week and kept it all clean. I made sure everything in the bathroom works.” That wasn’t exactly true. “I mean Ty did.”
River opened the door and walked in, looking around, and the happiness in her heart was easy to see. “Of course he did, and you made sure it was all perfect and warm for me to come home to.” There were tears in River’s eyes as she turned back to Lucy. “I’m home.”
Lucy poured out two glasses of Moscato and handed her one. “To homecomings.”
River held the glass up and clinked it with Lucy’s. “To homecomings.” She sat on the bed and patted the place beside her. “Now tell me what happened with Ty. Or rather let me guess. You finally started to get close to Michael, and Ty realized he couldn’t sit back and wait anymore or he was going to lose you.”
“Lose me? This is what I don’t understand. He shows up at Trio the other night and kisses me and tells me he’s always wanted me.”
River nodded. “Yes. I suspected he would do that someday.”
It would have been good if River had told her. “But I tried to get him to date me in high school and he said no.”
A frown crossed River’s face. “Luce, that was years and years ago. You didn’t exactly tell him you wanted to date him. You asked him to prom, and he suggested the three of us go together as friends. Are you still angry with him for that?”
“No. Of course not.” It had been a little more complex than that, but she understood that’s what River believed. “I tried to kiss him. I kind of threw myself at him, and he turned me down. I almost understand why he did it now. We’re too important to risk it.”
“Risk your friendship?” River asked.
“Yes.” She’d missed him so much while he’d been in college. She’d been sore about his rejection for a while, but Ty had worked his way back into her life, and when he’d left for college, the world had seemed a bit dimmer. “What if it didn’t work out?”
“That is what you say when you don’t really want a guy.”
Lucy huffed. “Well, that’s what he said to me back in high school.”
River nodded at her like she’d just made her point. “So you are still mad about it. Come on. You know Ty. Have you asked him why he really turned you down? You asked him to prom. You asked him a couple of months before he was leaving. Up until that moment you didn’t show any interest in him at all.”
It had been hard to be close to him but to never be with him. It was funny, though, because for all Ty’s golden good looks, he hadn’t had a high school girlfriend. He’d seemed happy to be around her and River and Sawyer. “I’ve loved him since I was a kid, but I didn’t want a boyfriend for a long time.”
“Because of your dad,” River said with obvious sympathy.
So many things went back to how she’d been raised. “It was a lot of things, but yeah. I watched my dad go through woman after woman, and it seemed like friends were a better thing to be. Not that Dad had female friends.”
“No, but he did have a bunch of drinking buddies who would show up and harass you when we were teens,” River pointed out. “I always wondered if one of them ever tried anything he shouldn’t.”
“A couple of times,” Lucy admitted. Sometimes her dad had parties that went late into the night, and more than once one of his friends had thought it would be funny to hit on his teenaged daughter. “But I got away and I told my dad. To his credit he believed me and took care of it. They didn’t come around again. And yes, I think that was part of it. I was scared of intimacy for a long time. Dad doesn’t party that way anymore. That’s why I was able to leave. Now he’s just lazy, but I don’t worry about anything bad happening to the girls. Back in high school, I finally realized I wasn’t going to get what I wanted if I never tried, and Ty said no.”
“He knew he was going to college and that he wouldn’t be home for more than holidays and summers for four years. He asked you to come with him.”
“He was joking about that.” It had been an absurd idea. She’d thought he was afraid of going alone.
“No, he wasn’t,” River countered. “He had it planned out. I remember vividly. He had the applications for that community college that was close to his. He was going to apply for all kinds of scholarships and loans for you, but you told him no.”
“I couldn’t leave my brothers and sisters.” She hadn’t gone to college for a lot of reasons, money being the simplest one. Family was much more complex. “They needed me. Dad won’t hurt them, but he thinks they should be able to do everything for themselves, and that included feeding themselves when they were just kids. I couldn’t go with Ty. Do you think I didn’t want to?”
“Did you ask him to stay?” River asked, though she knew the answer. They’d had this conversation before, so Lucy took it as a reminder of what the real history was. Sometimes she needed that.